Love poems about God and otherwise

Today we have the rare chance to dive in a bit deeper into the Song of Songs as it appears in our lectionary cycle so infrequently.

This morning we read a portion of a love song, to God, to Jesus, or to one’s bounding love felt for their significant other.

You see, there are three ways of reading this poem, this Song of Songs, this song by Solomon.

First, we can read it as an allegory, a love song of God’s love of Israel.

As Rabbi Akiva, born in first century and one of the greatest scholars on Jewish scripture put it, “The whole world is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the Scriptures are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.”

And it is interesting to read this passage with the idea that it is a love song to Israel.

The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.

Israel hears the voice of God.

And we see God, coming for us, coming to protect us.

Though we have been in the wilderness, still God finds us and watches over us.

Though we are starving in the desert, subsisting on feeble desert plants, God hears our suffering just as we hear God’s voice and gives us manna to eat.

Though we thirst after drinking of desert dew condensed upon a desert flower in the morning, God still gives us water to drink.

God is joyful and leaps towards us, a happy sheepdog to see his flock; God shares his joy with his people Israel

God is strong and forever full of youth, the young stag leaping across the desert plain; he gives us youth just as a child does, reminding the elders of their own youth when they too leapt and dashed around despite their Egyptian captivity.

God speaks to us.

God tells us we are free.

The spring lamb that died before Passover did not die for naught.

Life will bloom again.

God will lead us home.

We, o Israel.

God, tell us to rise again and come away.

God calls us home.

That is one way of looking at this poem as allegorical.

Another way is to see this as a portrait of Jesus’ love for the church and some see Mary as the Bride mentioned later in the book as she is sometimes known as the Bride of the Spirit.

The voice of my beloved child!

He returns!

No longer on the cross he returns as promised; he leaps upon the mountains as the did when Peter and James and John saw him on the summit.

His clothes are now just as sparkling white as when he was with Moses and Elijiah.

He is healthy again, no longer my child I saw hanging on the cross, but the vibrant young man who learned the law from back to front, the older, yet still young, man who would challenge empire, hate, and disease.

He watches over me, through the guise of the Spirit he sees me and protects me.

Though I am bereft from his dying, I now see him alive before me.

He lifts me up in spite of my weeping, he consoles me as if he is standing before me.

He tells me to rise up.

Rise up and put my sadness away.

Once more, you shall feel the rain upon your face.

Once more, you shall wake without weeping.

Soon, you will remember the smell of flowers blooming, the sweet taste of figs shall dance upon your tastebuds once more.

These recalled sensations are calling me back.

Calling me back to remember that the Springtime follows the rain.

Blossoms bloom with renewed vigor.

Everything that died, comes back to life.

Jesus, my son, calls me to arise and come with him to a kingdom reborn.

So too, am I.

Reborn by the voice of my beloved.

This poem might even be an historical one, a collection of verses celebrating the love between a human couple.

And in this case, I would assume it an example of a younger human couple for we’ve been married twenty-five years and I would say it’s been awhile since Jenn has compared me to a leaping gazelle or a svelte young stag.

And it’s pretty easy to see the Song of Songs as a love poem; a Shakespearean sonnet with many more verses.

The romantic love in this poem is palpable; the beloved looks to their beloved from afar.

He comes to their beloved strong as the strongest ten point deer; as fast as the fastest gazelle leaping upon mountains.

He comes for his beloved.

He sneaks furtively behind the estate’s protective walls, he peers through lattice to catch a glimpse of his love.

He beckons his beloved, Romeo calling up to the balcony to declare his love for his own newfound love.

He calls for his beloved, “Arise, my love and come away with me.”

His beloved clings to those words and hears the promise of springtime; of the cold rains that wet the desert now gone.

Winter is past.

The warm season returns.

Does his beloved smell the flowers now blooming?

Will his beloved taste the now ripe fig made fat with winter waters, sweet from the springtime sun?

He calls to his beloved, “Arise my love, my fair one, and come away.”

Was this the romantic tale of a real life couple?

Was this the story of Solomon, the author of this poem, courting one of his wives?

Is this text supposed to be historical and not allegory?

Perhaps.

And yet, what if I was to tell you that this poem is not a historical love poem written by Solomon nor is an allegory for God’s love for Israel or Christ’s love for the church?

Because most scholars now agree that this poem is just that, a love poem.

It does not adhere to the historicity of Solomon as paramour.

It is not an allegory.

It is instead, a poem.

Just a love poem.

So, why is it in scripture?

Why has it been included in the Hebrew Bible and then kept in the Christian bible for these past centuries?

That I am unsure of.

I can imagine that those who see it as an allegory might see it as such a stunning portrayal of God’s people Israel or others witness the true breadth Christ’s love for his church in these many verses.

Others who look to it for an historical account might see in the Song of Songs, Solomon’s marriage vows, the exchange of promises made before God between a king, the most powerful person in the land and his peasant bride.

If that is their belief as to why this poem is included in scripture, then I welcome it.

Still, what if this was “just” a poem?

It becomes then, a celebration of love between two human beings.

Sure, God may have had a hand in joining them together, but let us consider this a poem about romantic love, human love, or, as the Greeks called it, eros.

This love, this love between two human adults can expand the boundaries of one’s perspective from just a sense of self, a sense of ego, to caring for another so much that our egos recede as we become one couple, one body.

There is holiness in all things and there is holiness we can share for each other when we love each other.

And to love one another is a celebration of all that God wishes for us, certainly.

By loving each other, fully, deeply, completely, we enter into a joyful glee that consumes all things, can overlook most things, and might even forgive socks left on the floor!

This is a love undiluted and when we think of such love, we can consider this poem, this romantic love and along with it, we have the love of family, love of friends who understand us as well.

That this poem is scripture does not exclude other types of love; it does though, celebrate romantic love.

And when we understand love, when we understand we can be loved in our most imperfect shells placed within this mortal coil, we might find it easier to share love with all peoples.

This poem celebrates a love experienced that transcends the human body, the ecstasy of certain things and calls us to realize through that love, we can understand God.

God is greater than just a one to one relationship; my relationship with Christ is based not just Christ’s love for myself but the lessons learned because I am loved by those who choose to love me.

The same for you.

You are loved by Christ, there is no question there.

And still, we experience Christ in community and in relationships that might start with a glance across a crowded room or the furtive touch of one hand placed in another’s for the first time.

Love is a gift best realized when it is experienced outside of the self, when it is realized untethered to ego.

This might be a poem specifically about romantic love, it might be the eros celebrated between the bride and the bridegroom, but I do think it can apply to all love as it urges us to be awed by love.

Ultimately, your soul and your body are one and God asks to intertwine that oneness into a relationship that is holy because it is pure.

Because it is not solely our own.

Because it is shared.

The final lines of this chapter, left out of the lectionary reading this morning for some reason are this:

My beloved is mine and I am his;
   he pastures his flock among the lilies.
Until the day breathes
   and the shadows flee,
turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle
   or a young stag on the cleft mountains.

Until the day breathes and the shadows free, writes the poet.

And, I would add without expectation of improving the poem: until the lastingness of a love gifted to us by God meets the eternal; the eternal which also, is gifted to us by God.

Amen.